They look like us but they're not like us

*pictures from today's school holiday visit to Scienceworks and not in any way related to wordage.

This is the back-story, the part that I knew had happened. Some time last year, Climber and The Gifted Child apparently laughed at a classmate, not, Climber asserts, in a malicious way, more because the kid had inadvertently amused them; probably by making a mistake. The laughed-at child got very, very angry at them, some would say unreasonably so, and responded by threatening to go online that evening and delete Climber's Club Penguin account. The prospect of this made Climber almost hysterical with anxiety because he'd invested time and efforts into Club Penguin and had virtual pets and assets and points and achievements etc. I still remember how freaked out he was by that child's threat and it took a lot to calm him.



The laughed-at child has been spoiled. His parents' pictures appear in the dictionary next to the phrase Helicopter Parents. They are over-protective, and molly-coddlers, and spoil-the-kid-rotten types. Whatever that child wants, he gets. Whatever that child doesn't want to do, he doesn't have to. I mean, the kid had no choice but to turn out a pain, and of course, that's what he is. I've always avoided the family in the schoolyard where possible. But I saw them more as vaguely ridiculous than as a force of evil.



However. This is the part of the story I just found out, as Climber and I were mooching round together on Sunday while Cherub was off partying with the 7-year-old set. Some little time after the laughed-at child had presumably gone home and told his parents that Climber had been 'mean' to him, it just so happened that Climber got invited by another friend to go to an interactive exhibition at Australian Centre for the Moving Image. And whilst at that exhibition, they ran into the laughed-at child and his father. And that bloody father, seeing that Climber was on his own, without parents, and indeed without at that moment his friend, who had gone to the toilet, took that opportunity to cross the room and say to my then 8-year-old if you are being mean to my son you'd better watch out. And then he walked off. Thereby putting the fear of god into poor Climber. So much so that Climber couldn't even speak about it, probably under some misguided feelings of shame and fear. He bottled that incident for a long time. I think he was quite relieved when he told me, and that my reaction was enormous and furious anger at the bullying father.

Both Fixit and I are very, very angry about this. If that pathetic excuse for a father wanted to sort out his son's schoolroom problems on a parental level, then he should have approached Fixit or me, ie, someone his own size. To approach and threaten an 8 year old child is just appalling behaviour in my book. It makes me want to threaten to set Fixit onto him, just to watch his cowardly face turn pale. Or have a shouty schoolyard confrontation with him in front of as many parents as possible so I can embarrass him on a big scale. Of course, those things always go much better in your head as you rehearse what you would say to the bullying toad at yourself in the mirror or mutter it in the hallway on the way to bed. But it is just possible that this is a confrontation I would win because I have righteous parental anger on my side, despite my usual bad form at confronting people. I guess we will only see when school goes back and I come face to face with the worm in the schoolyard. I have 2 weeks to work out what I should do (advice is welcomed). I will, of course, inform our teacher about it once school goes back, not that I really think the school can do anything about it, but they ought to know.

Meantime, big bad thoughts in his general direction. Low-down evil cowardly bullying stupid scumdog. And that's the polite version.